The advice and rantings of a Hollywood script reader tired of seeing screenwriters make the same mistakes, saving the world from bad writing one screenplay at a time. Learn what it takes to get your script past one of these mythical Gatekeepers.

Honestly, I've taken on the rules so many times that I've gotten tired of writing the same post over and over again. It's a fight I'm tired of because it often means that some useful advice gets shat on because someone like Tarantino found a brilliant way to defy convention. Perhaps some of us giving the advice could take more care in how we present it. For instance, my 12-Step Screenwriting videos are NOT meant to be "the secret formula for writing a script" or "the only way you should write a script." It's merely a processes designed to keep you always moving forward in your writing. I would never have put it out there with the message of "this is how you have to write a script."

But I have never seen such ugly fights break out as I have with people being advised on script length, or "we see," or bolded sluglines. You tell a group of aspiring screenwriters that they should be vigilant about catching typos and at least one person in the group will pipe up with "Fuck you! Tarantino doesn't even spell his titles right! This is bullshit!" And then suddenly we're no longer having a conversation about what can help you make a good impression as a writer, we're throwing down about if this advice really matters if it cannot be rigidly applied in the absolute.

Scott and I specifically wrote this series as an answer to all the "Rules" and you'll find that as we discuss each commonly-accepted "rule," we're careful not to apply them as absolutes and explain why certain tendencies might be good or bad for your script. It was an attempt to move the discussion to a more useful level than the binary "These are The Rules/There are NO Rules" fights that every screenwriting board devolves into.

And then John August and Craig Mazin take on an article written by Ray Morton called "12 Signs of Promising Spec Script" and treat it like it's presented as holy writ with regard to all screenwriting.

*Sigh*

I've got a lot of respect for John and Craig and I don't know anything about this Ray Morton individual at all, so maybe I'm missing vital context as to why they went after his first-person article with such vehemence. If Morton's article was something like "12 Things Every Script MUST Have," I'd get it. But Morton isn't presenting his advice as if you're looking at the secret scorecard that all scripts are checked against. He's simply saying, "I've read a lot, and here are factors that tend to recur in the worst-written scripts."

Especially after reading the article and reviewing the transcript, I can't shake the observation that John and Craig seem to be turning Morton's piece into a strawman.

In a really telling moment, John says, "I think he’s also noticing patterns in his own response to things. And I think those are valid personal experiences. The frustration I have is that in observing his own personal reactions to things, then trying to go to the next step and codify these out as like these are things, prohibitions of things you should never do. And I think that is incorrect."

But.. I don't really think that's what this specific article IS doing.

I'll give John a little credit. He's usually the first of the two to concede that there's some kind of point being made in the article. While Craig is savaging the advice like "know who the protagonist is by page 5" and "something interesting must happen by page 10," John pipes up with, "I would basically stand up for him here. I think the overall point is that if by page five nothing interesting has happened, I’m going to have a harder time getting to page six."

This is where I'll remind everyone that a regular feature of Scriptnotes is the Three-Page Challenge. John and Craig read three pages of a script submitted by a reader and give their reactions to it. There are a lot of weeks where what they glean from those few pages doesn't sound terribly dissimilar to the sorts of diagnosis that Morton is making based on a history of reading entire scripts. Most weeks, a lack of clarity is a recurring issue with some of the submissions and if you pick apart Morton's article, a number of his issues are coming from the same place.

I'm not surprised that there's animosity between these gentlemen and the gurus who sell consulting services. Hell, I hate most of those guys too, so I'd be right there with them. If some idiot was charging $500 for you to attend his seminar and this was the sort of advice he was giving, I'd be all for dropping the hammer on him. Looking at the actual article, it's a pretty benign bit of first-person advice from someone who's a decent representative of the people whom companies have as their first-filter. Morton's biography claims he has read for Paramount and Columbia Pictures, among other companies and producers. He's also a freelance consultant and I get why that makes people like John and Craig wary. It makes ME wary. Yet his rates don't even seem all that out of line.

I've seen a lot worse advice coming from people with a lot less practical experience and much higher rates. That's all I'm saying.

Another part of Craig and John's discussion bugged me in how it was presented - their initial aggression that NONE of these RULES are ever true. And then if you listen, they kind of walk some of those assertions back. I wish it was that they'd lead with the point I quoted from John above and broke down what the reader was really saying when he was declaring these rules. Writers often talk about having to look for "the note behind the note." I think a lot could have come from examining "the flaw that spawned the 'rule.'"

(And I don't wish to dissect this at length, but it feels deeply disingenuous to use The Godfather as the film that disproves the "rules" when the article is specifically referring to spec scripts. Not only are most aspiring writers NOT Mario Puzo, who had a strong enough command of the form to have his audience hanging on every word, but The Godfather was not a spec as we think of them today.)

John and Craig's discussion comes from a place of "Don't let anybody tell you how to write!" But that's because John and Craig are seasoned enough at this that their process is innately effective. They don't think about "rules" because they don't have to. Aspects of writing that others have to think about, they do by instinct. If John August opens his script with a five page monologue, then it probably is because there's a definite REASON for it. And John's a good enough writer that it's probably a helluva speech that justifies that length.

It's like the "don't direct on the page" rule. Craig might say, "That's a stupid rule, I've never been told that! Hell, I've done it!" If he were to say that, I guarantee you that when Craig did it, it was unobtrusive. I also guarantee you that he probably didn't do it often in the script. (And more than likely, it was a scene where such direction was necessary for the clarity of what the audience does or does not see at that moment.)

BUT....

I've seen amateur scripts that really try to micromanage the directing. I'm talking about scripts where every other scene is noting a whip-pan, or a tracking shot or a camera move, or some other bit of photographic choreography. When people say, "Don't direct on the page," it's directed at THOSE guys. Clarity and brevity are two things a screenwriter should strive for and excessive camera direction is rarely either of those.

Guys at Craig and John's level are capable of writing strong description that captures the tempo and the flow of the scene so acutely that they don't need to say if the action provokes a close-up or a camera move. Why bluntly tell the director where to put the camera when good description subliminally leads him to that result AND has him convinced it was his idea?

The way I'd suggest thinking about it is if some reader tells you something that sounds like a rule, internalize it as "Oh man, some dumb bastard did that excessively!" Think moderation. If the "rule" is "Be between 90 and 120 pages," it doesn't mean that a script that's 89 or 121 pages is as egregiously offensive as the 160 page script. (If I glean from the first ten pages that this is a gross-out comedy and your page count is at 135, I admit, THAT is probably going to concern me. Conversely, if it seems like you're writing a WWII epic that clocks in at 75 pages, I'm also going to look askance at it.)

Look at how much space has been wasted on a debate over if the Rules are real and if John and Craig are right and wrong. It's clouding the real issue and all it accomplishes is the next time someone says, "Hey, maybe don't have your first page be made up of 3 sixteen-line paragraphs," instead of considering why they shouldn't do that, they'll say "Fuck you, man! Craig Mazin says there ARE no rules!"

That doesn't help you. This debate doesn't help you. It's a waste of your time and it's a waste of my time. So fuck the debate. Instead look past the rule and try to understand the writing pitfall it's trying to steer you away from.

Friday, March 27, 2015

I was recently contacted by my friends at theOffice who were trying to get the word out about their new 2015 Fellowship. Looks like a great opportunity!

Announcing the 2015 Fellowship to theOffice

If you're looking for the perfect place in LA to leave the distractions of life behind and finish that screenplay/novel/short story/what-have-you, enter now to win a FREE 6 month Premium Membership to theOffice.

theOffice is a quiet, communal workspace on 26th Street in Santa Monica (across from the Brentwood Country Mart). There are 26 ergonomic workstations in the room equipped with Aeron chairs, wifi, a reference library and all the coffee and tea you can handle. Charter and current members include JJ Abrams, Matthew Carnahan, Clark Gregg, Gigi Levangie Grazer, Jen Celotta, Gary Glasberg and many more. It's where serious writers go to GET IT DONE.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

It's been interesting seeing the passionate reactions to the post I wrote last week about why aspiring writers still need to move to L.A. I honestly didn't expect quite so passionate a response because I felt like it was a topic that had been covered a number of times. My assumption was that the new followers of this site would take it in, but that most readers would go, "Oh yeah, we've had this talk."

What I didn't expect was that this would blow up as much as it did on Twitter, to the point that a lot of working writers I follow ended up discussing it - and largely agreeing with it. Even knowing what sometimes happens on Twitter, it was unexpected to see some really aggressive responses spitting venom at those writers for daring to say this. I think that most people who bothered to read the entire article took it to heart, but there is definitely a vocal minority who registered their displeasure with a lot of rage.

The dissenting opinions typically fell into one of the following categories:

1) "No, you're wrong." - no effort made at refuting the points I made in my post. No effort at providing a counter-argument. Just "you're wrong." Persuasive.

2) "Well, Gary Whitta/Justin Marks/C. Robert Cargill/etc don't live in LA and they're successful!" - Marks spent a decade building his career in L.A. and didn't move away until after he was hired on THE JUNGLE BOOK, and he still regularly comes back to L.A. for meetings. He's made a name for himself, so he can be absentee. Whitta and Cargill came into the industry after making names for themselves in other aspects of it (and in Cargill's case, he pretty much had director Scott Derrickson demand he write a script for him.) There are unique circumstances like this for most of the names people threw at me.

Also, my whole post was about how just finding exceptions doesn't disprove the rule. Amy Purdy didn't have legs and was runner-up in a dancing competition, but that doesn't mean every amputee stands a chance of keeping up with the cast of the next STEP UP movie. So when someone responds to a post about exceptions by saying, "Hey, I found an exception!" it suggests they kinda missed the point.

3) "You're just trying to keep people from becoming competition!" - Geoff LaTulippe had the best comeback to that, saying something to the effect of, "I don't need to discourage people to come to LA in order to protect my job. Lack of talent does that for me."

4) "There are plenty of indie filmmakers who live outside of L.A. so you're full of shit!" - I wasn't talking about indie film in my post, so it's weird to try to move the goal posts here. We're talking about being able to make a living as a writer, and that's very, very hard to do in independent film. Indie film is often very low budget and the writer is not going to make a great deal. Yes, the exception is if one happens to write My Big Fat Greek Wedding or a Slumdog Millionaire AND if the writer's deal some how cuts them in on the success of that film. It's hard to overlook that the indie film successes make up only a fraction of the indie films actually produced. Indie screenwriters tend not to be rolling in dough - at least not from their films. If you knew the right indie filmmakers you might be able to see your stuff produced, but writing a $500K feature is not the sort of thing you'll quit your job for.

5) "Moving to LA is hard! It's expensive! I don't want to uproot my family!" - Not really addressing any of the points I made. I'm telling you what you need to do to have the best shot at making it. You're telling me why you can't do it. Your inability to follow through does not make my point any less true.

Here's the hard truth, folks. You think moving to L.A. is hard? It is a fucking cakewalk compared to how hard it is to become a writer strong enough to sustain a career. Moving to L.A. is the easy part of this plan. Anybody can move to L.A. It's WAY easier than getting a sale.

The responses weren't ALL dumb, though. Landon recently wrote me with what is a fair question:

With the current film industry growth in places like Atlanta and Vancouver, do you think in the next 20-30 years that we might see some small time screenwriting opportunities pop up in those cities? Or do you believe the vast majority of screenwriting opportunities will continue to be in and around LA for the foreseeable distant future?

Twenty to thirty years is always hard to forecast out. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the film industry growth in Atlanta and Vancouver will have basically no impact on screenwriting opportunities. They're production hubs, but they're not where the real business of TV and Film is. L.A. is always going to be the center of that aspect of the industry, just as the American financial machine is always going to have Wall Street as its Mecca.

Atlanta and Vancouver, as well as New Orleans are hot spots for shooting thanks to tax incentives that drive down production costs. Those love affairs are only going to last as long as it's financially viable to stay. It's really no different than the production companies that shoot a lot of movies for cheap in Bulgaria or Budapest, and that's been going on for decades without the business end of things packing up and leaving L.A.

This is where the powerbrokers are - the agents, the studios, the decision-makers. If your job requires an interface with them - and as a screenwriter it does - Hollywood is the place you want your roots. If you were trying to work on a crew, then moving to Atlanta or one of those other places probably makes sense.

I heard from a lot of people via Twitter after that post. Some of those who agreed with me were people who regretted not moving out to L.A. sooner when they could have capitalized on their own heat. One writer had been a Nicholl finalist and regretted not making the leap when people still cared who they were. There were a couple other people who'd tried it at a distance and wanted to turn the clock back too.

You might take 150 meetings just to get that one meeting at a production company that likes your script. Think about that - 150 meetings. That's not something you can squeeze in during an occasional week-long visit to California. Then there's the "shit happens" factor, the reality that a lot of meetings get bumped and rescheduled several times - especially when you're a low priority. Being told your meeting on the Warner lot is two weeks later is no big deal when you live in Echo Park, but when you're from Wicker Park... I trust you see my point.

If you write a good script, there's a strong possibility that many of your meetings won't be about making that script so much as they're a "hey, we like your writing. Maybe we can find something to work on." That usually means feeling out their tastes and pitching a new idea they like. When that happens, you'll probably be writing on spec. Should you find yourself in that position, make sure you know if you are able to take that script elsewhere should these people say no. If they hand you a graphic novel and tell you they'd love your take on it, you won't be able to do anything with that intellectual property elsewhere.

There's also the possibility that they're going to have multiple writers working on different pitches and treatments for that I.P. simultaneously, which again means more meetings without any guarantee it'll lead somewhere. Then after all that, they'll need to make your deal to write it - or they'll have you write it on spec and you're praying to God that some studio somewhere falls in love with it. If you're not writing it on spec, you'll probably be pitching it, and again, that means more meetings.

Time. Meetings. And very little cash. Being out of L.A. only prolongs this process.

I think people have this idea that you can just write from your hometown, send the script in, and two days later get the response, "Great! We're going to make this script! It'll be a movie. Tell us when the next script is ready." Your average film is the result of so many meetings, development sessions and general glad-handing that you need to have a presence in town. It's the invisible part of the process that many aren't aware of, but is critical to a writer's sustainability. I don't see that aspect packing up for Atlanta, nor do I imagine it being conducted over Skype.

And to wrap up, I want to collect a series of tweets written on Tuesday by GOING THE DISTANCE screenwriter Geoff LaTulippe. It fits neatly into our discussion of the advantages of being in L.A. versus everywhere else. Geoff gave his permission for me to do so. The only alterations I have made has been in combining some sentences into paragraphs.

Allow me a couple Twitters in a row here to tell you a story. [The] story is about how important both professional and personal relationships - which often end up being the same thing - are in ths industry. And it's a pretty good reverse flowchart of how just LIVING in LA drastically improves your position as an aspiring screenwriter. So come along with me on this journey back in time, won't you?The project that's currently getting the bulk of my attention is set up at one of the major studios. It is my first project with them. This project was set up with two production companies, one of which was founded by a music industry icon. It is my first project with them. So how did I come to partner up with this company? Through the second production company involved. Production Company A came to Production Company B with an idea, because B owned the rights to an article of that exact subject matter. They hit on the shell of an idea they liked, and decided to go out and find a writer. I was suggested first by the producer at PC B.Why was I suggested? As it turns out, this producer used to be at a different major studio, and was overseeing another project there.Why was that project there? Because one of the producers on THAT project had a strong standing relationship/track record with the studio.At the time it was purchased, the Producer on my CURRENT project wasn't even aware of me. They took a chance because of the relationship. Now, how did the producer on the EARLIER studio project know me? We have the same agent. In fact, she was going to write the very project I ended up attached to, but she got too busy, so she farmed it out. I was on the farm!How did I get on that farm (in other words: with my agent)? She was the very first person one of my friends, a producer at a major prodco sent GOING THE DISTANCE to when she initially read it, literally days before it sold to New Line. How did I make THAT friend? Through one of my best friends at New Line, where I started as a reader. The same guy I developed GTD with.How did I meet THAT friend? He was one of the very first people I met in LA, at a Dodgers' game, introduced to me by my mentor.And how did I meet my mentor? On a screenwriters' Internet message board, way back in the late 90s.My mentor started as an aspiring writer, moved out to LA, optioned a script, became an assistant became story coordinator at New Line and then several years later hired me. We'd stayed in touch the whole way through and he liked my writing. It was as simple as that.So that's about 10 layers of an industry relationship onion there. It all started off with a personal connection I made on a message board. Five years later, I moved to LA. The next two levels up in that story? People I met here, on the ground, within six weeks of touching down.Would ANY of that have happened to me if I'd stayed in PA, hoping to become a writer from my parents' house? No. Christ, no. I had to move here, act like a person, meet people, establish relationships, and then make the most of my opportunities when I had them.Anyway, some had been asking for a practical example of how being in LA helps writing careers. That was my arc. Hope it helped to read it.PS - I don't say it enough, but I owe many of the best things in my life to said mentor, @lukeryansays. I'm nowhere if he doesn't pluck me.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

It's Hollywood legend that Pretty Woman was originally a much darker story about prostitution called 3,000. Instead of a fairy tale ending, that version of the script ended with an overdose and the two leads not being together. In a true example of Hollywood rewrites in action, the "darker, grittier" version was thrown out and turned into a film that most women of my generation regard as a sweet romantic comedy,

Kate Erbland (who seems to write for every site I read), has penned an interesting Vanity Fair article looking back on the evolution of the original 3,000 script, talking to several of the surviving key players. The whole thing is worth a look, but I'm most amused by the comments from screenwriter J.F. Lawton, who says he decided to do 3,000 after his comedies weren't getting any attention. He figured the only way to get any heat was to write something "serious and dramatic."

This probably comes as a surprise to those familiar with stories of screenwriters bemoaning all the ways that "the suits" bastardized his or her script, but Lawton is pretty pragmatic about the whole thing, speaking without a hint of bitterness.
“If I had written the final draft, or somebody else had written the final draft, I don’t think it ever would have gotten produced,” he offers. “I think it got produced because the original script had gone to Sundance, it was prestigious, it was viewed as serious art, so it was allowed to touch into this area of sexuality and money and prostitution and all of that. It gave Hollywood permission to do it, and then Garry was smart enough, because he’s got incredible pop instincts, to say, ‘O.K., this is what people want to see, they want to see the fairy tale.’ ”

How's that for irony? It had to be edgy and serious so that it had the credibility to turned into an uplifting rom-com. It's kind of like if While You Were Sleeping got its start as a spec about a lonely woman raping a coma patient.

One the favorite bits of trivia I discovered is that Lawton wrote and directed the B-movie Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, which was a mainstay of Comedy Central's lineup in the mid-to-late 90s. I swear there was a year there where Comedy Central owned only three movies and this was one of them. I always seemed to land on the scene when the Cannibal Women were preparing to boil Bill Maher - yes, that Bill Maher - alive in a large pot. That the film also stars Adrienne Barbeau and Shannon Tweed probably gives you an idea what to expect. It's free on Amazon Prime, but fair warning, if you watch it, you'll be explain for months why the site keeps suggesting "jungle girl" movies.

And TV writer/producer/creator/showrunner and one-half of Children of Tendu, Javier Grillo-Marxuach has just made available a comprehensive, nearly 17,000 word essay on his time working on LOST. If you ever wanted a window into the kind of work that a TV writing staff does - particularly in the early development of a series - I would go so far as to call this essay essential. From figuring out the characters, to discovering the show's format, to the evolution of the series's mythology, it's all here, told from a man who spent two years working on that mysterious island.

Perhaps of the most interest, he answers the question "Did we know what we were doing, or were we just making it all up as we went?" In fact, he answers it repeatedly and I think the answers might cause some viewers to meditate on exactly what it means to have a plan, and if rigid plans are really the aspirational peak when it comes to television stories.

I'll also take the opportunity to get in a plug for Grillo-Marxuach's recently-released book of essays about television, SHOOT THIS ONE! It's available on Amazon for a mere $7.99 - or free if you have Kindle Unlimited!

How do you become a television writer? What does it take to create your own show? Did the writers of Lost really have a plan, or were they making it all up as they went? In a career spanning far longer than he cares to admit, Javier Grillo-Marxuach has not only written for some of your favorite (and not-so-favorite) shows — from the Emmy Award-winning Lost, to Charmed, Medium, Law & Order: SVU, and seaQuest — but also worked as a network executive, created a comic book that became a cult television series, co-hosted a popular podcast, and contributed essays on the entertainment industry to such publications as The Los Angeles Review of Books, io9.com and Apex Magazine.

Collected for the first time, Grillo-Marxuach’s occasionally far-too-revealing essays offer a true insider’s look into the good, the bad, and the frequently bat-guano insane inner workings of the entertainment industry. If you have ever wondered how shows actually get on the air, how it feels to win an Emmy Award, and why a grown man would have to swear off watching Star Wars for an entire year, then this irreverent collection is not only the book you want, it’s also the book you need! "Javi is willing to open up the hood and tell you exactly how it's done... if it is your ambition to be a writer -- or any kind of storyteller, really -- reading this book will not just entertain you but spare you some heartache and headaches as you embark on this magical, heartbreaking, brain-melting path." -- from the introduction by Maureen Ryan, TV Critic, Huffington Post

Monday, March 23, 2015

I've held onto this email for a while. It's an example of an email or a tweet I get now and then. Sometimes I'll pull out terrible emails as lessons in what not to do, but I tend to reserve that for the writers who are the most obviously entitled and/or belligerent. "Earnestly naive" is a little harder for me to make fun of, and so I'm putting this not to make fun, but to try to enlighten.

However, so as to not embarrass this person, I'm not going to use their name:

I stumbled across your blog and was hoping you could help with my situation.
As the subject line states, I am not a writer, nor do I want to be one. However, I have written a 30 min comedy pilot doing the best I can with formatting and story form and would like to give it the best possible shot of getting made. I don't want to make it. I would damn near give it away if I could, as long as I knew it would make it even somewhat close to air.
I am thinking the best way to proceed is have a script doctor or reader take a shot at it and give notes, then register it and start the query letter, contest, submission route.
If you have any thoughts or suggestions on my situation, I would appreciate some guidance. Also, if you have a script doctor/reader that you would recommend, I would be grateful.

The most succinct reply I can give is probably that if you're not in this to build a career as a writer, I probably don't know how to help you. It is so hard to break in and maintain any kind of ongoing career that I find it hard to pretend that a dilettante will have much success.

Also, I think you'll find that if you're not "all-in" it will be hard to get your connections to go the extra mile for you. People aren't inclined to put their own integrity with agents and managers at risk if the client they tell them to pick up ends up only writing one script. Going into this with the attitude of "Oh, it would be fun to see a script of mine made" is the wrong tact.

It's not any easier to get a network or studio to make your pilot even if you're "damn near giv[ing] it away." The two big factors you're always going to be facing is: the level of competition, and your own level of talent.

The competition is fierce, and you're up against people who've taken the time to write many scripts, to carve out time to write each week and to consistently rewrite, improve, move on to new stories. The fact that you're still hung up on questions like "How do I get the format right?" tells me that you probably haven't read many TV scripts (red flag) and that you haven't done enough of your own research to find these answers already, because they're out there (double red flag.)

In other words, you're very early in your writing pursuits. Experience tells me that your first script - and especially the first few drafts of your first script - are probably going to need work. Is someone with one foot out the door really committed enough to do that kind of work? My skepticism comes from the fact that a good writer must be driven to improve. They've got to have that hunger for success because that's what's going to push them to spend time getting it right, to not settle for "good enough," to look deep below the surface story and find the depth that'll really make their stories resonate.

The first concern any writer should have is not "How do I get an agent?" It should be "How do I get good enough to get an agent?" It's like asking how to apply for the Olympics when you haven't yet spent years doing two and three practices a day and honed your body into peak physical condition. "Oh, but I don't care about medaling. I just think it would be fun to be an Olympian."

Get good first. And you don't get good unless you're really playing to win.

It's not quite the same thing, but there's a little bit of overlap with the people who approach working writers and say "I've got a great idea for a script. Why don't you write it and we'll split it 50-50?"

Never say anything of this kind to a working writer. The idea is way less than 50% of the value when you're breaking down what goes into a script that sells. You can give a brilliant idea to two different writers (one experienced, one still learning) and you'll likely get scripts of wildly divergent quality. Actually didn't the reality show "The Chair" basically demonstrate this hypothesis?)

Getting your work made starts with giving a damn about how good it is. When you ask me, "How can I get something made with a minimum of effort?" I feel like you're not only wasting my time, you're wasting yours.

Monday, March 16, 2015

I probably would be a terrible teacher because after five years of covering the same material with successive classes I would likely be at the end of my rope at having to answer the same questions again and again, year after year.

Running a screenwriting blog, I've found there are certain questions that will. not. die. Sometimes this is because it's a basic question and other times because the answer is unpopular and people keep asking in the hope of finding exceptions.

Top of the list? "Do I need to move to LA to become a screenwriter?"YES YOU NEED TO MOVE TO LA TO BECOME A SCREENWRITER!

I don't care that you think technology makes it possible to do your work from afar and build your career. I don't care that you may have put down roots somewhere and have a desperate need to believe that you can enter a few contests and compete on the level of people who have come to down, done the legwork and done a far better job of landing in the right circles. This is a reality of the business. If you are serious about being a writer, figure out a way to get out here.

"But, what about---" NO. Shut up and read this post covering the subject. Read the other posts linked within it.

I know my audience, and I know that there are people ready with one or two exceptions, as if that impeaches my entire premise. Yes, there are people who managed to get repped from afar via the Black List, and that's great. There might even be one or two sales there - that's also great.

I'm also not going to pin my hopes to that. I've got a friend who got great representation via the Black List, but as he's currently living and working out of town, he's ended up trying the routine of flying in for a week once ever four months or so. His reps are good at packing those weeks with meetings, but I know he's gone on a fraction of the meetings that local writers have. Those meetings are what build relationships and relationships are what really provide the foundation for a long career.

Once you've written a couple half-billion dollar blockbusters for the studios and you're the first guy or gal they're calling for every assignment and rewrite, you can move to Antarctica for all they care. But those writers have earned the right to be so remote.

But I can hear you. You're still about to tell me about the exceptions. So let me tell you a story. Have you ever heard of Amy Purdy?

Amy Purdy is an Olympian. She won a gold medal for snowboarding in the 2011 Olympic Games. If you don't follow sports, you might also remember that she was the runner up on last spring's cycle of Dancing With The Stars. Pretty impressive, right?

Amy Purdy also did all of this with two legs that had been amputated below the knees. Yes, she won a gold medal and a dance competition while using artificial legs! Her competitors, despite not having the handicap of needing to learn to walk all over again on leg prostethics, still got their asses kicked!

It's an inspirational story. It's an exceptional achievement. But does it mean that everyone who has their legs amputated will be able to hit those heights? No, of course not. Amy is an incredible exception.

When you tell me you don't believe me that staying in Sioux City, Iowa is making things harder for yourself, what you're basically saying is that you think you're Amy Purdy. When you get your gold medal and get to the finals of Dancing with the Stars, I'll tell you I was wrong about you. Until then, my advice is always gonna be "Get to LA."

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

I realized this past week that I have not been motivated to go to the theatre for any new 2015 releases. There were a number of films I saw throughout January, but all of them were holdovers from 2014, as I caught up on the Oscar nominees. Since then, there hasn't been anything I've been passionate enough about to go see on the big screen.

This isn't to say that I wont see anything from these first few months of release. I recently went through and added several films to my Netflix queue, movies that I wasn't going to pay $14 for or even $8 (I often go to the early-bird cheap AMC screenings on weekends), but that I wanted to eventually have a look at. Looking at what I had consciously skipped unwittingly gave me a window into how I chose my entertainment options.

For example, I've like a lot of Michael Mann's past work. The trailer for BLACK HAT did very little for me, but had it gotten incredible reviews, I probably would have checked it out. Instead, most critics really disliked BLACK HAT and audiences stayed away. I know of a couple friends who sing its praises, but that's not enough to sell me. I try not to be a slave to reviews. If there's something really I want to see, I don't care how bad the buzz is. But if my internal gauge is apathetic, middling notices are only going to reinforce that.

The same with JUPITER ASCENDING. I really would love to support original sci-fi, but the trailers looked ridiculous to me, appearing like a YA adaptation without the pre-existing IP. You can't always count on marketing to know how to sell something that strange, but again, the word on the street seemed to be "not worth it."

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY? I'm not the audience for that. At some point, I'm sure I'll see it, but in the same manner in which I endured the TWILIGHT films - at home where I can eject the DVD or work on emails when my interest wanes.

FOCUS? I came close on this one. I want to believe Will Smith can get his mojo back, and Margot Robie's good, though it wouldn't have killed them to cast someone easy on the eyes. (Since inevitably someone will assume I'm being serious, I'll point out that's a joke.) This is another one where the tone of the trailers didn't pull me in, but I feel like the right word of mouth would have had me at the theatre same-day.

The only film I regret not going to see is THE DUFF. I thought it was pretty ridiculous to cast Mae Whitman in a role described as "ugly" and "fat." But again, the marketing was aimed at people younger than me who grew up on the book. The word of mouth on this one was pretty good, even comparing it to CLUELESS and MEAN GIRLS and the fact I haven't gone out to see this is more a reflection of bad timing than anything else.

But I realize that all of these choices boil down to "just not feeling it." We hear a lot of concern about "superhero movie fatigue" but now I wonder if we might soon approach "content proliferation fatigue." We have so many viewing options all vieying for our time and a startling amount of it is good. Back when most original content was limited to four or five major networks, it was pretty easy to run out of programming for your own individual tastes and still have plenty of time left over. Now, even if we exclude pay cable entirely, there's almost too much TV to find all the good stuff.

And lord help you if you come in late to a show. The backlog of quality only gets larger, expanding almost as rapidly as the current programming. It's like trying to run a marathon on a treadmill track that keeps getting longer. I'm mid-series in a FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS binge, have THE WIRE and THE AMERICANS sitting in my Amazon Instant Queue. I am SIX episodes behind on GOTHAM (which I think means I'm just not that into it), just finished HOUSE OF CARDS, haven't even had time to start UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT, and if I let that go too long, I'll soon fall behind on ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK, VEEP and TRUE DETECTIVE. Oh, and I should probably check out FARGO too.

If you want to be part of the current cultural conversation, you need to be up on those shows. Thank God I've been able to keep current with BETTER CALL SAUL, BATES MOTEL, THE FLASH, THE GOLDBERGS, BROOKLYN NINE-NINE and a few of my other aging favorites.
There's an oft-repeated claim that "TV is the new film." I don't really believe that, but looking at my apathy about film and my overwhelming list of TV options, I do believe that TV has overtaken film, at least in terms of quantity of quality hours of content. Of course, that goes both ways. One thing that's held me back from binging THE WIRE is the knowledge that it's a long haul. Doing 13 eps of HOUSE OF CARDS is a 4-day sprint I'm willing to make time for - THE WIRE is 60 hours.

So does any of this resonate with you guys? Has the bar been raised in terms of what you're willing to sit through and what is capable of separating you from your hard-earned money?

In addition, Michael Beach (SONS OF ANARCHY) and Nick Searcy (JUSTIFIED) have joined the cast, playing opposing legal counsel for Hammer and Steenburgen. Narrator Cooper Thornton (PARKS AND RECREATION) returns for his fourth Black List Live! read.

I've been to two previous readings and both of them have been great fun. The Montalban Theater is a great venue (with convenient parking right next door for $10.)

The synopsis provided by the Black List reads:

Frank Adler (Hammer), a deliberate underachiever, is raising his niece Mary (Grace) in rural Florida. Things get complicated for both of them when he enrolls her in school for the first time and she is immediately labeled as gifted. For reasons that become boldly apparent, all Frank wants is for Mary to have a normal life, but standing in his way is his formidable mother Evelyn (Steenburgen), and the small problem that he doesn't actually have custody of Mary.

Friday, March 6, 2015

I first wrote this review after seeing FAULTS at AFI Fest last November. As this is the day the film becomes available on VOD, I am rerunning it my original review below

You can rent or purchase it on iTunes and Vimeo. Showtimes for selected theatres appear after this review. Also, you may wish to check out my 4-part interview with writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

Summing up Riley Stearns's feature debut, FAULTS, without blowing too many details that are best left discovered for oneself is a tricky prospect. What I can tell you is what it displays an abundance of from its writer/director: confidence.

I read the script about a year ago and it was basically catnip to me. I'd venture that some 75% of the film centers on the dynamic between two characters while confined to one hotel room. It's the type of scenario that leaves a writer nowhere to hide: there's no place for pyrotecnics, no kinetic car chases or action scenes. Every bit of tension has to come from those two characters and the claustrophobia of their location. There's no half-assing the writing here. The characters have to pop, they have to have a clear conflict and when you're limited to a duel of words rather than fisticuffs, the dialogue has to be sharp as a jagged piece of glass.

And then once you get all that right on the page and pull off an engaging read, some poor director has to come along and make it look like more than a filmed stageplay. You can probably think of all of the ways a terrified helmer might add a little extra spice out fear that his audience would become bored. These include: wild and crazy angles, which wouldn't be complete without frantic editing, and on-the-nose scoring to add gravitas to the quiet, subtle dialogue.

Stearns doesn't fall back on any of those crutches. That takes balls, especially on your first film. The fact that FAULTS also has to skillfully mix humor with a lot of intensity and creepiness makes this even more of an achievement. I've seen a lot of films that have attempted to mix tones in this way and it soon becomes apparent that there are a lot of ways to fall on your face. A misplaced joke can destroy tension rather than heighten it. A bad gag at the wrong point has the potential to turn the film goofy right when it can hurt the most. Finding that tone and making sure the actors play within that space is the director's responsibility and Stearns hits the bullseye as surely as if he were Robin Hood.

So if you're tempted to think that a film centered largely on two actors in one room is an "idiot proof" prospect for a director, you need to realize there are probably about fifty ways FAULTS could have gone wrong, even with it starting from an incredibly solid script.

It helps that FAULTS has a very solid cast. Leland Orser plays Ansel, a former cult deprogramming expert whose since fallen on hard times. This is a man at such a low point in his life that he steals not just towels from his hotel room, but the battery that powers his TV remote. Following one of his seminars, he's approached by a couple played by Beth Grant and Chris Ellis. Their daughter Claire has fallen into the clutches of a cult and they believe Ansel is the only one who can save her. Ansel may be at the point in his life where he doesn't give a shit, but he needs money, and deprogramming Claire is an opportunity for him to make enough to clear some pressing debts.

Thus Ansel kidnaps Claire and has her brought to a motel room so that he can spend the next five days psychologically breaking her down and undoing what the cult did to her. Ansel knows how to challenge her beliefs all while weakening Claire's resolve. What we witness is the gradual breaking of Claire, in a very strong performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Winstead also happens to be Stearns's wife, but don't confuse this connection for any sort of nepotism or vanity project. Winstead does very good work in a role that is a lot more challenging than it appears for much of a first viewing. Suffice to say, if Winstead impressed you in diverse roles such as Smashed and Scott Pilgrim you'll probably enjoy seeing her play yet another entirely different sort of character here. (And yes, add me to the chorus that thinks Winstead was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Smashed a few years back.)

As the film is not in wide release, that's probably all I should say about the plot. As seemingly straightforward as the premise is, FAULTS zigs and zags in ways that you won't always see coming. It probably isn't giving anything away to heap praise on how Orser and Winstead gradually evolve their dynamic, allowing for a few shifts in the relationship that aren't even immediately apparent until the script specifically underlines them.

And through all of this, Stearns's steady hand shows. Most of these two-handers are shot with long takes with little camera movement. Occasionally there might be a slow push-in or a well-timed pan, but this doesn't feel like a film where the director went out of his way in leaving the editing room to save him, if need be. Many scenes are given room to breathe, playing out in takes that hold on the performers and invite us to register the subtlety in their performances. The score is modulated similarly, as it's completely absent from many scenes, allowing its limited usage to make much more impact.

If this sort of film appeals to you the way it does to me, I hope you'll check it out.

As I wrap up my talk with writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead, we discuss the importance of making shorts, how you have confidence that two people in a room can make for an intense film, and working with supportive producers.

BSR: Jumping back a bit, you definitely would not have had this opportunity at all if you had not been making shorts.Riley Stearns: No. The only reason that FAULTS got made is because THE CUB got into Sundance and was seen by the right people. Even if it hadn’t gotten in I feel like had it been seen by Keith and Jess, they loved it enough that they would have given me the meeting which would have led to them reading the script. A lot of people don’t realize that you don’t get handed things you have to work for them. I’ve done three shorts... they’re out there, and they show what my personality is. Some people write a feature script and that’s all they have and they want people to let them direct it. And there’s no way that’s gonna happen… they need to see something to know they can trust you.

BSR: And you get the training. If you hadn’t done those shorts I’m sure the first day on set—

RS: It would have been a different movie, for sure.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: And even just building [relationships.] He’s used the same DP on his shorts and by the time they made FAULTS they had a shorthand and a real understanding. There so many things in doing the shorts that prepared you.

BSR: And just having the confidence of knowing “Okay, I’ve done two takes. That’s enough.” Or “I need more coverage.”

RS: That’s another thing, knowing what you need.

BSR: You have to go through the experience of editing something to know what options you’ll need in the editing room.

RS: And I’m an editor of my own stuff, usually. I edited all my own shorts. In another world I would have edited FAULTS but I’m glad I worked with our editor Sarah Beth [Shapiro.] I like having another opinion in the room and she’s so great to be around and so talented herself that I know I’ll continue to work with Sarah Beth on things...

After a couple of days of working with her, she knew what I liked and what I didn’t like. FAULTS is very deliberate in how we cut back and forth. It’s almost like theatre and once she got that rhythm of things, there are scenes in the movie where they are just Sarah Beth and I had the tiniest little input on. She got it so well and cut it how I would have cut it anyway.

BSR: Speaking of it being like theatre, you read the script and it’s a great script, but it’s also two people talking in a motel room. As a reader, I was thinking, “Gosh, how would I make this interesting on screen?” And I assumed you’d have these crazy angles and this crazy blocking to dress it up, and you go in the opposite direction. There’s a lot of… I don’t want to say “static scenes”—

RS: No, they’re static.

BSR: Very minimalist. We’re you’re not even cutting back and forth from over one shoulder to the other. You have one shot of Claire and Ansel sitting at a table and just kind of a slow push-in on them, for a scene that must last at least a good two or three minutes, which is an eternity on screen. How do you get the confidence to do that and know it’s gonna work?

RS: All of my confidence comes from the performances. When I’m shooting something, I have the intent of what I want to do, to do it more in a long take or minimal coverage, but if your actors don’t do a good job, you’re not able to do that and that’s why editing exists – so you can manipulate the performance. Manipulating performances when performances are good is kind of tragic. A lot of my favorite films are one-take things, and that scene in particular where we’re doing the slow push-in, I thought we could do it as one take, but I wasn’t sure if it would work. We shot that part first and if I needed to punch in, that was gonna be our second effort, going back in and getting that coverage. But they did it and I turned to my producers and said, “I think this is gonna be a one-take thing” and they said, “We love that.” So the other bit of confidence is not only the actors, but the people with money saying “We agree with that.”

It was the same thing with the opening scene of the movie where Ansel is trying to pay for a meal with a used voucher. It’s all one take. I knew I wanted to do it as one take and after we did the first run through... my producer Jess came over and said, “We think this would be a really great one-take thing” and I was like “I agree!” And just to have someone else say that... because that was early on in the shooting, to give you the confidence that that’s okay.

MEW: In my experience, typically the producers are worried about getting more coverage and are on the directors, “Do you have coverage? Do you have enough coverage for that?”

BSR: “If you screwed up, I want to be able to fix it in the editing room.”

MEW: Yeah, so having producers who [want the opposite] is a pretty awesome feeling.

BSR: Does doing longer takes change your performance at all, Mary? Knowing that it’s probably gonna be the full take?

MEW: I love one take things, I love when you can get everything, whether it’s a push-in or scenes where the camera’s moving around, first on one actor and then on another... SMASHED was that way. That was the first time I worked that way for an entire movie. I never really knew when it was my coverage and when it wasn’t and it was such an exciting way to work because you were always giving it you’re best. You’re not deciding which take has more importance [in terms of acting full out] depending on where the camera is.

BSR: You’re just playing the scene.

MEW: And I try to bring that same mentality even when I am doing more traditional coverage but it’s hard because people start saying “Just so you know, this is your close-up,” putting that pressure there.

RS: It’s putting all that weight on just one shot instead of the entire scene.

MEW: Yeah, so I prefer to do the longer takes for sure.

BSR: So to wrap this up, you finish the movie, it gets into South by Southwest. What was that like?

RS: Well, I’m from Austin, so premiering at South by Southwest was pretty amazing. I had family, I had friends, I had a lot of our crew at the premiere. It’s also one of the big three festivals in the United States, so in terms of distribution I knew what that meant. And you just have more eyes on you. I was really excited about the fact we were in a crazy premiere position.

It was the best place for us to premiere. I don’t know if a Sundance would have felt as right for this film, but South by Southwest was definitely the right energy. It’s a little more renegade, ragtag in a cool way, and I felt like that kind of energy was right for our film.

BSR: Speaking to distribution, everybody says it’s so much easier to make a movie these days because of digital and technology, but that also means there’s a hell of a lot more competition. How does that play into getting distribution and getting an audience to watch your film?

RS: I don’t necessarily look at it as competition, but everyone’s competing for fewer slots. Nothing’s really going to theatres anymore. All the indies are VOD same day or VOD-only. A couple years ago we were still in a space where FAULTS could have played 30 cities or something like that, but as it is now, I’m just proud we’re in theatres at all because not a lot of people get to do that anymore. Distributors are being more discerning about what represents their brand. Instead of asking, “What would people like?” it’s more like “This represents us.” I feel like Screen Media is in a really cool position right now. They’re re-branding themselves and are picking up some interesting films. FAULTS was one of the first ones of this new wave they’re doing. Mary’s other film ALEX OF VENICE, which premiered at Tribeca, [Screen] will be premiering that about a month after FAULTS. I feel like we’re in a really cool slot with them. They’re excited about film and overall, I just wanted a distributor who’s excited about the movie and I feel like we got that with Screen Media.

BSR: So what are you working on next?

RS: I haven’t written it yet... but soon I’m going to be starting this thing about voyeurism. It’s a little in the same world as FAULTS, darkly comedic, and weird and all of that good stuff that I like to write about.

BSR: And Mary, what do you have coming out?

MEW: I have a show premiering a couple days after FAULTS comes out, called THE RETURNED, for A&E. And then I just finished a movie that J.J. Abrams produced [starring] John Goodman.

BSR: And that’s also a two-hander, isn’t it?

MEW: Also a two-hander, very contained, even moreso than FAULTS. That was a lot of fun and so now I’m riding a wave of press for FAULTS and the show, looking for the next thing.

RS: And the thing I’m working on right now would be for Mary… if she likes it, and that’s key. She’ll be my first choice, but I don’t want her to feel obligated to do it.

MEW: I think now that he’s found his voice and I think we’re so similar in what we like and our tastes that it’s hard to imagine not wanting to do it.

RS: I’m gonna make you do some really dark, dark stuff. And then you’ll be like “Eh...” I’m gonna describe the character as “really hot.”

MEW: Yeah. Totally. Describe each body part.

BSR: Three page description.

You can see FAULTS tomorrow on VOD, or if you're lucky, at a theatre near you!

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

In this installment, FAULTS writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead talks about how one gets the chance to direct their first feature, and how it's no easy task to get a movie made even when you have a known and acclaimed star attached.

BSR: So I want to get back to talking about Ansel’s character. I’m curious – are we supposed to think he genuinely was a genius about cults and deprogramming at one point, or was he kind of conning people and that eventually caught up to him? It seems you can read it either way.

Riley Stearns: I know that people can read certain things either way, and that’s nice because people can make their own opinions about things. In my mind, Ansel was really good at his job, was one of the better guys at doing what he did, good enough that he had his own TV show for a while... the biggest fault in Ansel is that he doesn’t take responsibility when things go wrong. Even though he was great, because he couldn’t take the blame for things going wrong, that was the bad part about him.

BSR: And he never really recovered.

RS: Exactly.

BSR: We touched on this earlier, but as you’re writing the script and realizing you’re spending so much time in that one room, is there a point where you’re going stir crazy, like “I don’t know how I can keep them in here another fifty pages?” How do you keep that interesting?

RS: What’s funny is that I was worried about a lot of it being in one room. As I was writing I – I don’t do a really long outline, I do abbreviated versions – and I knew this scene needed to be about “this thing” and that scene needed to be about “that thing.” I didn’t really think about it as a stir-crazy kind of thing. I knew what it needed to accomplish. So I never felt like I needed to get out of the room, or whatever. The information the characters needed to dole out in each scene made those scenes not-boring to me.

There was [one script reviewer] who used the terminology of, I had an “outside instigator,” which is where we need to leave the motel at one point. Now I’ve never read a screenwriting book in my life, except to learn formatting, so this wasn’t a thing I was consciously doing, but maybe leaving [that one room] was one thing that I knew I needed to do at one point. That moment when we leave the motel – either you love it or you hate it, but I think it works in the movie. I think it’s one of those things that gives you a sense of space for a second. But there are people who watch the move and are like, “I hate when they leave because I want to be just in this one story.” For good or for bad, I think it lets you miss that story for a moment.

BSR: And it lets you reset, because he comes back and stuff has happened that he’s not aware of.

RS: That’s the thing. I feel like she uses it against him, so when he leaves, she’s like, “I wasn’t expecting this. What can I do now? Oh, I can manipulate him this way.” It wasn’t me thinking “I need an outside instigator at this point, but unconsciously I felt that we needed to leave [that room] for a second. I never felt bored writing the characters, which was pretty nice because I’ve had other scenes in other scripts that I’ve written, where I’ve been like “I just need this scene right here and I’ll have to figure out what they’re gonna say.”

BSR: I want to jump to talking about actually making the film now. I’m sure some people are gonna see the movie, see that Mary’s involved and go "Okay, this guy had it easy. His wife’s a famous actress, she says 'I want to do it' and boom, it gets made." Tell me how that assumption is wrong.

RS: For one thing – and Mary won’t be offended by this because we’ve talked about it – but Mary’s not as big as people think she is.

MEW: Yeah, if that was easy to do, I’d be working a whole lot more! (laughs)

RS: Exactly! And from the get-go, Mary was the only person I wrote the script for—

BSR: Who was your second choice?

(Riley and Mary both laugh)

RS: That’s funny to think about! The problem is, with a script like this, you need at least one person to be involved so someone else will read it and say, “At least they’re involved.” Or you need a first feature so they can say, “Okay, at least I saw that and what they can do.”

We had a big problem with casting, especially with Ansel. It was a tough role. We ended up with the right person for the part, but it was a long road getting to that point. At least with Mary, I knew I had her. I also knew that if I’d written something Mary didn’t like, she wouldn’t have felt obliged to do it.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Right.

RS: She would have said, “It’s not the right thing for me, but I can see So-and-So doing it.” I felt like I’d earned it. I wrote the script, I had a vision for it, and I’ve done some shorts that led up to it. So I don’t think anything was handed to me. Keith [Calder] and Jess[ica Wu], who produced it, they’re the reason it got made.

BSR: How did they come into it?

RS: I did [my short] THE CUB in 2012. It played at a few festivals at Sundance, but really ended up premiering at Sundance in 2013. So I did that in the Summer of 2012 and around the same time I was doing the cub, I had the idea for the deprogramming thing and I thought that would probably be my next feature. At the time it was more of a dramatic thing, it wasn’t as darkly comedic. I was still figuring out my voice and what I wanted to do. After I did THE CUB, I realized that’s the kind of movie I want to keep making. I like to laugh and for things to be a little subversive and darker… funny, still.

Once I thought about the FAULTS script in those terms, that was when it started moving forward. I started working on the script – at least in my head – in the summer of 2012. Around the time that THE CUB got into Sundance, I was talking to Michael Mohan, who’s a friend of mine, a director, and he said, “You have to have a script done when you go to Sundance.”

BSR: Because people are gonna see your short and say, “What else do you have? I’d like to work with you.”

RS: Exactly. So I worked really hard to figure out how to write it. Part of that was outlining it. I just knew all I could think about was Sundance. At that point, I didn’t know if this movie was going to get made anyway. It wasn’t real, but THE CUB getting into Sundance was real. I was focusing on the now. “I’m gonna go to Sundance and have fun with THE CUB. Mary’s got a movie there too and that’ll be fun and when I come back, I’ll write the script.”

I went to Sundance with the outline, just in case anyone wanted to read it. Nobody wanted to read it, obviously. I didn’t get those types of meetings off of it, but Keith and Jess saw THE CUB on a video link and contacted me – they’re friends of friends – and said, “We should meet up and talk about if you have any feature ideas.” I was like, “Great! I’ve got one that’s 85 minutes long! It’s two people in a room. Low budget!”

When I got home, I told myself, “You’ve got a day when you’re home to relax and rest, and the next day, you’re writing.” So I wrote it in two weeks. My goal in my mind was to get that ready in time for that meeting I had set with Keith and Jess. The morning we met for brunch, I was able to pitch them the entire thing because I’d just written it. At the end they were like, “Great, let me know when you have it for us to read.” So I was like, “I did just finish it yesterday. Let me just [proofread it] and I can send it to you in a couple days.”

A couple days later I sent it to them and a week later they said they wanted to make it.

So it really was the first people I sent it to wanted to make it, ended up making it. I didn’t have a problem in that way, but in other ways it felt complicated, like getting the actor and figuring out what our budget was gonna be. So going back to Mary being involved, I really feel like it was just the script that got it made and that I knew what I wanted to do. It was nice we didn’t have to worry about casting Claire, but I don’t feel it necessarily helped or hurt us.

MEW: Yeah, and also Keith and Jess have been producers [for a while]. They’re not just gonna hire somebody because they’re someone’s husband. That’s not how it works when you’re working with legitimate producers. They want to hire talented people and from the script being as good as it was and the short being as good as it was – that combination told them, “This is somebody we can trust.”

RS: And they love Mary. They’ve been looking to work with her for a while, so for them it was kind of a win-win. But I do think that had the script gone with somebody else, they’d have said the same thing.

MEW: And there are plenty of other scripts I’ve loved that I’ve tried to get made - just because I love the scripts - that Riley’s not involved in, that have not gotten made. I’m always attaching myself to little projects, trying to help a filmmaker that I like who’s trying to get something made. They’re usually told, “You have to cast somebody more famous than her.”

BSR: They pull out that book of what everybody’s worth in each territory and say, "Can you rewrite this for Dolph Lundgren? Then we can get you money from here."

MEW: Exactly, so I’m usually a hindrance to them, to be honest, having me involved, because I’m not big enough to get things greenlit. So the fact that we got this made I think is much more of a testament to the script.

RS: It just is what it is. I don’t put Mary in my stuff because I think it’s gonna help or hurt. I put her in my stuff because she’s my favorite actor and I want to work with her. I’m writing my next thing for her even though I have no idea what the budget’s gonna be, but it’s just because I want to see Mary in this movie. It’s not because she’s my wife and I feel like it’ll help get the movie made.

MEW: I think we both have different opinions now on directors who use the same casts. Especially me as an actor, I’d be like “Why don’t you give somebody else a chance?” And now [we realize] if you’re able to do that, it’s so awesome. Why wouldn’t you want to?

RS: I think some people do it even though they shouldn’t.

MEW: Right. Trying to force something.

RS: And there are some directors out there who do it because they know it will help get their movie made. But the Wes Anderson reparatory group… that’s because he works really well with these people.

MEW: And they click!

RS: And I feel that we click really well.

BSR: It’s a strength, not a weakness.

RS: People should know too that most people don’t want to work with their spouse. It’s not an easy thing for a lot of people, but for us it is. I’d rather work with Mary than somebody else because we get each other so well. It’s all for the betterment of the film.

BSR: And you haven’t yet had the experience of coming home to say, “Well Mary, I had to cut that ten-minute scene.”

MEW: Right.

RS: I don’t think I cut any of your big stuff. There were things where, Mary’s doing an amazing performance and I’m choosing to stay on Ansel—

MEW: I think that was the only time you showed me the dailies and I was a little like, “awwwww.” But then when I saw it—

RS: She could see what we were doing with it.

MEW: Especially in context with the whole film, I was happy with it, but in that little moment I was kind of bummed.

RS: That was hard for me too. Once you see it in the film it works, but that was probably the hardest thing about being there, wanting to see her more but realizing that for the betterment of the movie, it has to be on him.

FAULTS is a hard movie to talk about without touching on a few character revelations that expose themselves over time. We do our best to talk around the biggest spoilers early on in this part, but those wishing to go in totally fresh might want to skip ahead to later. I'll put a big, bold "END SPOILERS" at the point where it's safe to scroll too.

In this part, we talk about writing and performing characters with layers, and Mary's thoughts on issues with the writing of many roles for women. If you want to know what it takes to attach an actress like Mary Elizabeth Winstead to your film, you won't want to miss this.

BSR: It’s funny you say you weren’t aware of the complexity of the role. I hate using the word “twist,” but there are layers here that aren’t apparent on the first viewing.

Riley Stearns: Yeah, it’s what you choose to present to the audience.

BSR: And you’ve done it in a way where we’re watching the first layer, and then after it flips, we can go back and see how it fits. It’s not like you cheated because there are a lot of movies where on a second viewing, the artifice collapses. “Oh, you were lying to make sure we didn’t figure it out,” in a way. When you’re writing, is it tricky to remember, “here’s what they’re experiencing on the first watch, but when they go back, the scene then has to play on this level” and being true to both streams?

RS: I don’t know that I thought about it that way. You have to keep certain things away from the audience obviously, certain bits of information, but I feel like a lot of the stuff the parents do, on second viewing, that was like my hint to the audience. The mom and dad and the way they perform things is a little more over the top and I talked about that with the actors. Everyone’s playing a part in the movie and that was the kind of trick that I wanted to play. Like you said, it is a twist, but as I was writing it, I don’t know that I could think about it in that way.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: To me, it was like you were thinking of it as a slow unveiling of truth as opposed to “let me hide this in this moment.”

RS: That’s a good way of putting it. Exactly!

MEW: By the end you see what’s going on, but you’re slowly giving away the truth.

RS: I had a meeting with an actor who I wasn’t going to cast anyway and that actor called it an M. Night Shyamalan twist, which I was kind of offended by because with our twist, the movie doesn’t hinge on that. I feel like even if you know what’s gonna happen in our movie, it doesn’t affect the final product because you don’t know how it’s gonna get there.

BSR: Now as far as playing that, Mary, how are you layering your performance? It would be easy to just play Claire’s deception as sincere up until the reveal, but in watching it, it feels like you were very aware of “real Claire” and “fake Claire” and letting us get a hint that she’s wearing a mask. How do you do that?

MEW: I’m trying to remember! *laughs*

RS: Did you think of it as two characters? In your head you kind of had to compartmentalize—

MEW: I wanted it to feel very sincere in the beginning. I kind of realized as I was doing it how much I was enjoying all of it. At first I was worried about it, like, “Should I be having this much fun doing these emotional scenes?” Then I realized that was a good thing because ultimately Claire is having fun with this whole situation. She’s just like getting a kick out of it. I was going with sincerity, but also enjoying it.

BSR: Letting a little of that bleed through so on a second viewing the audience goes “oh!”

MEW: Exactly, and letting the joy of it build and build until the end of it she’s just in the happiest place because she wanted this whole thing.

RS: Mary was the one who figured out that Claire was a sociopath. Once she figured out that the character gets enjoyment out of hurting other people, that opened up the character for her.

MEW: It’s more the power she gets from being able to control other people. I bring it back to – I always forget – I think her name was [Diane] Downs? She was this woman in the early 80s or late 70s who murdered all of her children and who tried to claim it was this man who broke into her car. Farrah Fawcett played her in a TV movie. But Diane’s interviews, she’s laughing, she’s enjoying having the spotlight put on her. She’s giddy.

BSR: “I have a story people want to hear!”

MEW: Yeah, she’s she’s trying to contain it, but you can see.

RS: Claire is like, “I’m so good at hurting other people, it’s great!”

MEW: What she gets from it is she gets worshipped, and anyway, that’s the long way of saying I just had fun with it.

END SPOILERS

BSR: Do you often get offered roles like this, with this complexity?

MEW: No, I don’t think that kind of material comes around very often in general. Just look at the landscape of female roles out there. I just think it’s really hard to find material that’s exciting and roles that are gonna showcase everything that you can do. And I wasn’t even sure going into this if I’d be able to bring the complexity that would make this a great role for me. Not even until I saw the movie was I like, “Okay, I can take a deep breath.”

RS: And in a way, I think I didn’t know what I wrote until we got there and started shooting. Like, I saw what you were doing, but I don’t think you knew until the first cut, like, what it was. Which is cool and exciting! I kind of want to keep working that way, doing stuff you’re not totally aware of.

BSR: It’s always weird when you give someone a script and they come back saying “Oh, I see you’re doing this” and you’re like “I didn’t mean to, but I’ll take it!”

RS: People see stuff all the time that you didn’t intend in your work. It doesn’t make it any less that you didn’t put it there on purpose. Own that shit! I might not have realized what it was I was doing, what Claire was, until Mary started showing me.

BSR: Mary, I don’t feel like you’re typecast in the sort of roles you do, but do you feel like you’re typecast in the sorts of scripts you’re sent?

MEW: That’s interesting… I think it’s changing now. The past couple years it’s been different than it was before. It’s really interesting how one project can kind of shift the perception of how people see you, even in terms of looks and stuff. I used to get “the cute girl” and now I get “rough, haggard” because of Smashed.

RS: Or after The Thing where they thought of you as really tough.

MEW: You can always tell someone saw something else I did and thought “She’d be good for this.” I still get heroine roles or action roles, and then I get more indie, rough-and-tumble, kind of messy...

RS: Once Mary was sent a TV script and her agent said, “I asked them what they were looking for and they said, ‘A Mary Elizabeth Winstead-type.’” Mary was like, “Okay I’ll read it.” And then she ended up not getting it!

BSR: Considering you’re an actress a lot of people would like to work with, what would you like to tell writers to stop putting in their scripts for female characters? Like you’re reading it and going, “No, no.”

MEW: One thing – I think you were tweeting about this the other day and I was like, “Oh my god, you’re so right!” Character descriptions – like detailed descriptions of how they look, and how hot they are, when it’s unnecessary. If it’s important to the plot that they have blue eyes or whatever, of course, put that in there. But if it’s your vision of what the perfect woman is--

BSR: Yeah, but with the NORAD scientist we don’t need to know how large her cup size is.

MEW: Especially for me, the majority of things I get sent are “cute, but doesn’t know it, blah, blah, blah.” It’s just like, how many times can I read that? It’s become a cliché at this point, so don’t do that. When there’s a sex scene, don’t talk about how the camera lingers on certain body parts. It’s not your job, you’re not directing it, and even if you are, it’s probably best not to do that.

RS: You don’t need to put it in the script.

MEW: Stuff like that. I think you want to avoid clichés. I’m really surprised how often writers are not trying to actively avoid cliché. And it can be to a point where I can’t even finish [the script.] So it can really be the difference between getting your script read and not.

RS: At least by the person you want to read it.

MEW: I also just have a real hot button with derogatory things against women or any sort of minority person, like if you think something’s funny and you put it in there… it can really turn people off, so just make sure it’s important.

BSR: Especially when you lay it out like that it’s like, “oh, I did that...”

RS: I probably did that in my first script! Also, touching on the character description thing, I in general just don’t describe the characters. I say how old they are and that’s all I put in there. You want other people to envision what that character is, but you’re doing yourself a disservice when it comes to casting because you could be singling out one group of people as the type [and excluding an entirely different group] just outside of that because they weren’t your “type.”

BSR: Or they get the script and go “That’s not me.”

MEW: And that happens all the time.

RS: Or being so specific on age, so people look at it and say, “I’m not fifty so I’m not gonna read this one.” But in your head you’re thinking, “Well, it’s probably fifty but it could be younger.” There was something in FAULTS even that was, like [age] thirty to fifty. If it’s on the page, somebody reading it thinks it has weight.

Monday, March 2, 2015

Writer/director Riley Stearns made his first splash in the film world when his acclaimed short THE CUB debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2013. That ended up opening the doors for him to write and direct his first feature, FAULTS, which premiered at last year's SXSW in Austin, Texas.

FAULTS stars Leland Orser and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, who also happens to be Stearns's wife. If you don't know Mary from her acclaimed performance in Smashed, you need to rectify that immediately, but I'm willing to bet you've seen her in films as diverse as Sky High, Live Free or Die Hard, The Spectacular Now, the Death Proof half of Grindhouse, and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

I saw FAULTS at last year's AFI Fest and was a big fan of it. Honestly, it'd be an impressive work even if it wasn't the product of a first-time director. It's a tense movie about a disgraced cult deprogrammer who's hired by desperate parents who want him to deprogram their daughter, who was recently taken in by a cult.

It's been playing the festival circuit for months and is finally coming out in limited release and on VOD this Friday. Recently I sat down with both Riley Stearns and Mary Elizabeth Winstead for a chat that spanned the writing of FAULTS, the issues surrounding good roles for women in film, the challenges of making a first feature, and much more...

Bitter Script Reader: Why FAULTS? Where did this come from?

Riley Stearns: The boring answer is that I’ve always been fascinated by cults—

BSR: If that’s the boring answer, this is going to be very interesting.

RS: What’s funny about that is even as a kid I was fascinated by cults and I don’t think a lot of kids are, but there was something about the idea that you could be like a really intelligent person, very strong minded and you can get sucked into something that somebody else can indoctrinate you into, so the idea of cults was definitely the impetus of that.

There was this COPS episode that I was watching with my dad when I was a kid and there was this deprogramming where the girl called the police and said, “My parents have kidnapped me and are holding me in this room.” The police came and interviewed the parents and were able to discern what was going on. And at the end they said, “Your parents know what’s best for you so you should stay with them. We’re not gonna file a report or anything like that.”

BSR: This made it to air on COPS?!

RS: I feel like this was an episode I saw when I was a kid. I tried to do research on this episode because I knew I was gonna be asked about it after I put it in some director’s statement I did and I can’t find any evidence that this episode actually exists. But in my memory it’s so real and I remember my dad saying, “They knew what was best for her,” like the parents are trying to help her. But as a kid, I realized there’s something really weird about an adult being told what to do.

And I can’t find any evidence that episode was a thing, so I’m trying not to talk about it as much, but as a kid I realized that deprogramming was the craziest, coolest thing and as I got to be an adult, I realized not a lot of people had done a story about deprogramming, at least not the way I wanted to do it. By the time I was ready to write a feature script, that idea was still there.

BSR: Is this your first feature script then?

RS: No. I’ve probably written five or six feature scripts. All of them are shit. FAULTS is the first feature script that I actually think is good. Mary would say otherwise--

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: They’re all good. They get better and better, as they should.

RS: Yeah. My first feature script ended up being 40 pages long. Since I was 18, I’ve written five things other than FAULTS. The other thing about those scripts is they were all copying other people’s styles. I’m glad I wrote them now, but the thing about them I don’t like is that they’re like [me doing] Garden State, mixed with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My second one is a Tarantino rip-off. It still wouldn’t make a good movie, but as a writing sample it worked out well. My next was a Scott Pilgrim-style script that I still think is funny, but I don’t think it would make a good movie.

BSR: I see them going in line with Mary’s career there.

MEW: I know! Yeah! [laughs]

RS: It totally is! Those are the scripts that I was reading.

BSR: It kinda seeps in.

RS: Exactly! You write what you know, people say, but in this instance I was just copying what I knew. It led to me finding my voice, which is what I think was important.

BSR: My first feature was a procedural and when I took it into my screenwriting class, they were like, “This is great. I can totally see the LAW & ORDER cast in it!” Yes, yes, you nailed me.

RS: You have to do that though. It’s very rare for a writer to come out and have it but just their voice. And even now I feel like I’m probably copying somebody.

BSR: It’s like a synthesis. The Tarantino thing. He takes a little bit from different people and mixes it into something new. With FAULTS, did you set out deliberately to write something that was low-budget and easy to produce?

RS: Definitely. I wrote it thinking that I would have to Kickstart it, because we did that with THE CUB. We got like $5000 for THE CUB, thinking for the next thing we could get $50,000-$100,000, thinking I could do this on my own, not realizing that had I done this on my own, I wouldn’t have been able to find the motel room. [We wanted to make the motel room] its own thing. It’s very brown, and a lot of production design. If I was doing that on my own it would have been not as good.

BSR: Does working within the limitations of a low-budget kind of define how you’re gonna create the characters and the themes you’re working with, because you’ve gotta have something compelling enough to stay in that room?

RS: I felt like the story itself could sustain being in a small, contained location. I’ve always been good at character. I feel like I’m good at each character has their own voice. A lot of scripts you read, every character sounds like that writer’s version of the character. I feel like one thing FAULTS had was, here’s this weird, eccentric deprogrammer and the subject who he was deprogramming. It wasn’t necessarily budget-driven at all. I feel like even if I had a lot of money, that would have been the same thing that I wrote. But location was the big thing about budget for sure.

BSR: Now Mary, I had a question for you. As Riley’s writing this, I assume you know you’re gonna act in it. Were you feeding him “I’d love to play this kind of part” or “Don’t do this because I hate when I see this in scripts?”

MEW: I don’t know... I was so excited as I was getting the pages of what he was writing but I was also really scared because the character he was writing for me just seemed really, really hard. She’s sort of enigmatic and doesn’t give much away, but also has to be really complex and I was sort of like “I don’t know how to do this.” I loved Leland’s character so much, Ansel, and was like “this character’s sort of flashy and fun!”BSR: “Can you make him a woman in his twenties?”

RS: The only thing that Mary said that influenced the script in any way was we got to a point where, like 40 pages in… she said, “Ansel’s so cool and eccentric. Can Claire have any of that?” And so the next day I wrote the scene where she does the screaming thing, just because I wanted her to do something weird, and it ended up being one of my favorite parts in the whole movie.

MEW: At that point, Claire was just doing a lot of explaining about what the cult is, so I kind of was poking him a little bit, “give me something.” And I still was scared to play the role even at the end, but then once we were doing it, it was like the most fun I’ve ever had in a role, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with it until we were really going.”

RS: What I love about that is that it is a hard part and I didn’t realize it was such a hard part. Like I knew she could do it, so I didn’t even think about it as being a difficult role, which is why it was funny to me when she read it and was like “This is really hard!”

MEW: And I was worried he was trusting me too much, even when we were shooting it--

RS: I never give her notes because it’s always what I want. I’m like, “That was perfect!”

MEW: We usually do one or two takes and I was like, “Are you sure? Are you sure!?”

BSR: “In a month you’re not gonna be sitting in an editing room cursing me, right?”

MEW: Exactly!

Come back tomorrow as we delve a little more into the plot twists of FAULTS and I ask Mary what kind of writing it takes to interest an actress of her caliber... and what she hates seeing in scripts.

About Me

I've been reading scripts in Hollywood for over ten years. In that time I've read for Oscar-winning production companies, and one of the "Big Five" agencies, among others. I'm here to share what I've learned.... mostly because I'm sick of reading bad scripts.

I'm that guy you need to get past at the agencies and production companies; the first one in the office to read the script.